Words: Neil Gaiman
Pictures: Dave McKean
HarperCollins Children's Books, 1997 and 2001
K & up
Fiction
There was a boy who one day was left alone by his mother with his little sister and his dad. His dad was reading the news paper and not paying attention to waht was going on around him. He and his little sister went outside to play, she with her Barbie dolls and he trying to put mud down her neck, then his friend Nathan came over.
With him Nathan brought a bowl with two goldfish in it. He really liked the fish, thought they were quite "neat" and so he offered to swap Nathan something for it.
He offered Nathan transformer robots, baseball cards, books, a punching bag, a penny whistle that gave his mom a headache, a spaceship that no longer floated in the tub, a puppet, and his Clownie that he slept with every night. Nothing seemed to satisfy Nathan, so he thought and thought and thought. He gets brilliant ideas about two or three times a week. "I'll swap you my dad", Nathan replied with "That's not a fair swap. I've got two goldfish, and you've only got one dad." He went on the explain how much bigger his dad was than two goldfish and how he can swim better than a goldfish, even though his little sister disagreed. So Nathan decided that he would trade for his dad. His little sister warned him how mad their mom would be when she got home, but he took no notice of this warning.
When their mom got home she started to look for her husband but all he could talk about was his new goldfish. She looked everywhere for their dad and finally untied his little sister, took out the sock in her mouth, and asked if she knew where he went. As little sisters always do, she told her mom what he had done with their father. Well their mother being furious told him that he was not to come home until he had their father, and the little sister was to go along too, "Fancy allowing your brother to swap your father for two goldfish and a bowl. The very idea."
Off to Nathan's only to find out that he swapped his father for a guitar from Vashti Singh, so off they went to her house. Once they got there they discovered that she had already swapped him for a gorilla mask. Off they went to Blinky's, and what a long walk it was! Along the way his little sister put the mask on and he made fun of her, but when he put it on she told the policeman that he had escaped from the zoo, well at this the policeman yelled at him, making his sister laugh at him. Blinky had a very big house and when they rang the doorbell a butler came and answered the door, he asked "Whom shall I say is calling? Me. I said. And me, said my little sister." Well Blinky comes down and makes the butler give them some ginger beer (which they did not really like) before he showed them Galveston, a fat white rabbit with one black ear. So they took Galveston and went to Patti's house. How excited everyone was to have Galveston back, even the Queen of Melanesia (who was there visiting) shouted in excitment! Finally they took the bother and sister duo to the back of the house where there was some chicken wire around a rabbit house and in the middle of it sat their father. He was simply sitting there eating a carrot and reading his paper. He opened the door and his father crawled out covered in grass.
Finally on their way home! Father kept eating his carrot and reading his paper all the way there. When they got home their mother was very angry, she made her husband take a bath and put all his clothes in the laundry. While his Dad was in the bath his mother began to tell him off, she made him promise that he would never, ever trade their dad for anything ever again. (But he never promised about his little sister, HA)
I must say this is the most fantastic book I have read to date! Oh my, just the very thought of it! In the back of the book you can read how the book was inspired. One day Gaiman said something to his son that made him angry and he lashed back with "I wish I didn't have a dad! I wish I had...." Apparently his son thought about this for a bit and finally finished his thought with "I wish I had goldfish!" Well everything just went from there, the idea started coming and so Gaiman went to his computer and wrote the first couple of sentences but then did not know what to do next, so he simply saved in on his computer. A few years later he got stuck on writing a tv script and went looking through his computer to see if there was anything interesting there. He found the first to sentences of this book, all of the sudden he just knew where he wanted to take it. After writing it he gave it to McKean to do the illustrations, which I might add are out of this world! They are so fun and interesting! I could stare at each page forever and probably never see all that is on it. It is mixed media, collages of photographs, hand-drawn images, and the typical style of McKean. There is no way to describe what they look like, it is something that you just have to see for yourself! I could see children absolutely loving this book and wanting to read it again and again! The fact that he swapped his dad for goldfish is hilarious and it just seems to be something natural that always happens, no one finds it weird. In fact, the children keep passing him along! What a world it would be if we could swap people for things such as goldfish! It would be easy to read this book and pay close attention to the illustrations, then have the students make collages of their own out of all sorts of mixed media that can be easily found in the room, or even in the art room. It would be so fun! It would be such an open assignment that I am sure the creativity would flow out of the children and onto the paper! This is most DEFINITELY going to be in my classroom!! I also and not the one who discovered it. My roommate was in the library, I guess looking at the picture book section I had showed her recently, and found this book and like the illustrations (being an Art major) and checked it out! Then I found it in the living room and decided to give it a look, and lo-and-behold I feel in love with it!
(Which everyone should check out, he is one of a kind)
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